NPS Round 3 (Fort William)
Where shall I begin…..how about the 9 ½ hour journey from Shrewsbury to Fort William, on which we got lost in Glasgow city centre for an hour thanks to Sandy’s navigational skills…… oh well.
Upon arrival at the track on Friday afternoon the gods appeared to be on our side and the sun was shining, we decided to head straight to the top of the track as Woody (Andrew Woodvine) and I (Richard Challinor) had not been to Fort Bill before and we were looking forward to learning the track along with Sandy (Plenty), Jethro & Chris (Whitfield) and Mark “earthquake” Weightman.
Sandy, Jethro, Woody and I got on the gondola to the top and enjoyed the spectacular views of 360 degrees countryside and a mother of a DH track running straight through the middle of it that looked like it was going to take a lot of taming. We started walking down the track with excitement, discussing lines and having the crack with each other, the track looked smooth at the top section with flat out open turns which then lead into large rock gardens with steep twists and turns then into the wooded sections which were rooted to the max with nice wet mud before leading onto the final section of flat out pedaling over table jumps, doubles and the final hip jump. We were all coming out with some exotic looking lines but by the time we got to the bottom were all abit overwhelmed by the sheer length of the course and were struggling to remember it all. We decided to forget about it til the morning practice and went for a couple of beers in the lovely seaside town of Fort William before returning to our digs for a deserved sleep.
Saturday morning was again dry and sunny, with practice starting at 9am we got all the bikes out of the vans and did some final spannering on them before heading out. We decided to go steady trying to site the track for the first run, this went well but we soon realized that we would be absolutely knackered if we did not conserve energy as much as possible, so we did half runs and smaller sections to try and survive the punishment of this massive track.
Then it was time for the seeding runs where I think everyone in the Leisure Lakes team had an Ok time of it, with Mark Weightman doing a 5min 38sec to be the quickest on the team. I managed a 5min 40sec, the 2nd quickest team rider was Woody also doing a 5min 40, closely followed by Chris Whitfield on a 5min 42sec and Jethro Whitfield having a nightmare run which he wasn’t happy about, but everyone had made mistakes which needed to be ironed out for the race on Sunday
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Race Day arrived and everyone was up for it and ready to hit the track ………. We decided to do two practice runs on Sunday morning, but this soon turned in to three runs as bike problems and line choices played their part in the proceedings. After practice the bikes were all washed down by their pilots and prepped ready for the longest run of their season!!
The Master category were to be first down the hill with Mark taking the healm and pulling off a 5.32.870 run to place him 2nd followed by Chris on a 5.37.678 to take 6th …..and Sandy who had a red flag on his run, had to push back to the top after 30secs of racing and do a re-run of 6.10.051, so top draw performance by the old (er) boys for pulling off some convincing results.
Next off was the Senior class with Woody followed by myself, Woody did a 5.30.944, then I set off to see what was occurring, I managed to crash on the open section, like a girl….. getting back on to do a 5.36.524 and find woody on the hot seat smiling like a Cheshire cat. Our results stood for quite some time before we were finally knocked back to 4th and 8th but we were both happy enough and a first National Podium for Woody…….so job well done!
The final category for the team was the Expert’s with Jethro not having a good day in the office (for his usual high standard) to do a 5.53.986 after crashing which he wasn’t happy with, but as the wise man once said “that’s racing!”.
Overall we all had an amazing time at Fort Bill and enjoyed the experience of a World renowned track with good people and good times.
Chally Out!
